Death's Grip
by WhtsThFrequency
Summary: Flatliners. The life and death struggle is over. But things still haven't returned to normal. In fact, they're about to get a lot stranger. Picks up where the movie left off.
1. Reincarnate

_Disclaimer. I own nothing. Thought it was time fore some more Flatliners stuff. Takes place right after the movie. Things aren't all right yet……_

**Patient: Wright, Nelson C.**

**Admitted: September 2nd, 1990, 11:30 pm**

**Discharged September 4th, 1990, 11:00 pm**

**Reason For Admittance: MRI and CT scan, possibly brain hypoxia.**

**Initial **

**BP: 85/50 - LOW - Acute, mild/mod hypotension with poor CRT**

**HR: 50 - LOW - Acute, moderate bradycardia**

**BT: 94.0 - LOW - Acute, moderate hypothermia**

**PulseOx: 92: - LOW**

**Mucous membranes mildy cynanotic. Dehydration noted.**

**Notes: Patient brought in in semi-comatose state by classmates, Mannus, Rachel M. and LaBraccio, David S. Classmates informed doctors that patient had been in a car accident and had possibly been without oxygen due to facial obstruction for upwards of ten minutes. Patient had been unconscious and subsequently revived by classmates.**

**CT: negative for hypoxic damage**

**MRI: negative for hypoxic damage**

**Final**

**Initial **

**BP: 130/85 - NORMAL**

**HR: 70 - NORMAL**

**BT: 94.0 - 96.5 - LOW - mild hypothermia, variable**

**PulseOx: 96 - NORMAL**

**Notes: No hemorrhage or edema of white/gray matter noted. Cellular differentiation remained normal. Patient QAR, aware, responding. No appearance of brain damage. Fluids administered for dehydration and bed rest for 48 hours. Dismissed under care of classmates.**

The single sheet of paper lay in his lap, the paper bright white with its bold black lettering, cold and unfeeling. It had begun raining, the raindrops colliding with millions of tiny tapping noises against the windshield, every time being smeared into nothingness by the cheap, squeaking wipers, like myriads of tiny tin soldiers hurling themselves in vain at the glass. It was one piece of paper, and it was telling him in cold, medical language that he was fine. Fine. Twelve minutes without oxygen, without life, and he was _fine_.

But he wasn't _fine_.

He would never be _fine_.

Rachel glanced over at the stoic, tense figure in the passenger seat, staring intently at his lap. The left side of his lips curled slightly in the characteristic Nelson dog-snarl.

"Hey."

He didn't respond except for a slight facial twitch. He kept looking at the paper, as if it was lying to him. As if when he turned it over, it would say something completely different on the back. It was hiding something. A stupid piece of paper, telling him that there was nothing to worry about, his head was as right as...well, as right as rain. He knew it was lying. If he kept looking at it, maybe the words would change. Maybe they would start telling the truth.

"Are you all right?"

"No." He said, his tired voice forcing its way out of his mouth sounding like a scratched-up record being played too slowly. He didn't feel like giving it the old "I'm just dandy" routine.

"Are you hungry? We can pick up some food if you want...Thai? Come on, you can be too tired for Thai. What about than kang talay stuff you like?

Nelson muttered darkly under his breath, and Rachel leaned over. Damn it, she was doing her best to be civil, and squashing down all of the curses and profanities she wanted to spew at him for being so stupid. She felt like she was trying to cheer up a sulking child. "What?"

"Kang talay. Talay is pronounced Tal-ie, not tal-aye. And Kang isn't 'kang' it's 'kuang'. " He said louder, a hint of annoyance coming through in his tone.

Rachel bit her tongue, barely avoiding a curt retort. Only Nelson would bother to correct pronunciation on a single Thai dish. She glanced over and caught him looking up from the paper at his knees at her. The snarl in his lips was gone. His eyes had lost their characteristic half-narrowed, sneering appearance. They were soft and tired. In fact, he looked exhausted even after two days of being in bed. Scraggly, pale Nelson. What a disaster. A few days ago he had been ranting and raving in the streets, to them about life and death, his face battered and bruised and eyes gleaming with a feral look that had frightened her to her very core. His eyes went back down to his knees. "Sorry."

"It's ok."

There was an awkward moment of silence as Rachel slowed the Subaru to a halt at a red light. "Do you just want to go back home?"

"Home? My apartment?"

"Yeah."

"No. I don't want to go there." He enunciated each word carefully and slowly, as if pronouncing a death sentence. She didn't blame him. Even with things semi-resolved now, being alone was probably not high on his list of priorities. Plus...his apartment was a pretty impersonal place. She had only been there a few times, but the high, vaulted ceilings, bare white walls, and sparse antique furniture always made her wonder how he could bear the loneliness and silence, broken only occasionally by the mechanical roar and clatter of the el-train outside.

"We can go to mine. My couch isn't the best, but it's comfortable."

"Wait, you're not going to sleep on the couch."

"I think you need the bed more than I do."

"No, no. I'll sleep on the couch."

"Are you being chivalrous or just difficult?" She let her frustration slip a little bit and Nelson instantly recoiled, out of submission or just indifferent avoidance, she wasn't sure

"Whatever you want." He leaned his head back on the headrest and closed his eyes wearily. "Whatever you want."

In truth, the very idea of him staying over at her apartment was _not _exactly what she wanted.

"I just don't want to encroach on Dave's territory." She heard him finish his thought snarkily under his breath, and lost her temper momentarily again. She was sick and tired of the way he had been manipulating her sympathies all the way home, vacillating between pitiable exhaustion and his usual cold, slow-burn nastiness.

"We slept together, all right? As in slept. That's it."

"I'm sure that's all it was."

"Oh God, come off it, Nelson. As if you ever had any claim to me."

Nelson exhaled loudly, but didn't respond. Rachel gritted her teeth and the Subaru lurched forwards with a cough as the light turned green. He was infuriating sometimes, one huge god damn thorn twisting in her side. During the first year, she had found his flirting charming, almost flattering. Second year, it had just been annoying. She realized more and more that his confidence was only conceit, his charm only the smugness of self-satisfaction. Third year, she had ignored it completely, increasing her disinterest proportionately with his frustration, sarcasm and occasionally lewd insinuations. She knew that now, after years of silent rejection, he intentionally played up his natural vanity and arrogance just to get a rise out of her, and it was incredibly irritating. Whatever. She could pronounce his damn Thai food any way she wanted. What a blustering peacock, even after twelve minutes at the brink of death. The thought of Nelson as a peacock, preening and admiring his feathers for hours on end, brought a smirk to her lips.

It wasn't until they made the final right turn into her apartment complex than he spoke again, quietly and begrudgingly. "Rachel?"

"What" She pulled quickly into a parking spot and turned the engine off, heaving up on the parking break. It protested mildly, but then settled in with the fact that it was going to have to hold the old car in place all night.

"When I said I was sorry on the phone, I meant it."

"It doesn't matter now, it's over."

"I wasn't just talking about the experiment."

But Rachel was already out of the car, trying to pretend she hadn't heard the second part. Nelson jerkily shoved open the side door and got out slowly, testing his balance. He had almost fallen twice on the way down the hospital parking lot, and was determined not to make such a fool of himself on the front steps of her apartment.

"I wasn't just talking about the experiment" he repeated as she walked to a door on the first floor and set about unlocking it. Still she didn't answer, pushing open the door with a creak of wood. She knew he was probing, for what, she wasn't sure. Probably sympathy.

"Hey, I bet twenty -four hours ago, you didn't think you'd be spending the night here, did you?" Her voice come sarcastically from the dark of the doorway, mimicking his comment of a few weeks ago. Nelson blinked owlishly as the lights came on. His glasses were somewhere in the small duffel bag of things that someone, he assumed Steckle since he was the only other person that had a key, had picked up for him, and it was still sitting in he trunk of the car. Walking carefully through the doorway, he immediately pointed his body towards the couch. Rachel quickly reached around him to close the door and then stood in his path, arms crossed.

"Bed."

Nelson raised his eyes skyward in an exaggerated motion, like he was trying to look into the top of his own skull. "Come on, leave me some dignity. I'm not stealing a bed from a woman."

Rachel cleared her throat pointedly.

"At least let me have a damn cigarette first."

"Dave may let you smoke in his house, but you're not smoking in mine. Besides, Randy didn't put them in the bag, I'm not driving you to a gas station...can you live? The hospital gave me some sedatives for you anyway."

"Sedatives? What kind of sedatives? What the hell for?"

"They said you were 'intractable' during the MRI. You're been on them all weekend. You didn't notice twice daily intramuscular injections? You've got to be kidding. Aripiprazole."

"Fine. You have more?"

"They gave me a few doses."

"Give me one."

"Nelson -"

"Give me one right fuckin now." his voice cracked angrily and the dog-snarl came back to his lips.

Rachel gave him a dirty look and walked over to the side of the bed where her purse lay, and she drew out a plastic bag with a few single-use syringes and a bottle.

"Dr. Mannus, will you handle the injection?" Nelson sat down on the side of the bed and muttered mockingly, savagely jerking up his shirt sleeve. _Giving him tranks like he was some sort of unruly elephant. Christ. _But right now sleep was his number one priority, and he didn't want to be aware of anything, not right now, not anymore. Rachel expertly drew up a little over a milliliter from the bottle and came back over to him, sitting down on the bed and stretching out his arm to expose the bicep. Nelson snorted briefly as the harsh sting of an intramuscular injection ran up and down his arm. But Rachel was quick and it soon subsided, and he barely even remembered the shot.

Within a few seconds, it began to hit him like a ton of bricks. Jesus. They made this stuff strong. His head swam slightly and all his muscles felt heavy, especially the injected arm.

"Bed." Rachel uttered the single word, recapping the needle and placing it carefully back in the bag, making note to put it in the sharps container the next time she was at the hospital for rounds. Bed. Hmm. He nodded in acceptance and turned towards the bedroom with Rachel holding her ground, watching him as if he was going to make a sudden dash for the couch at any moment. But he didn't. He only painfully pulled off his shirt and flopped down on her bed in only the loose cloth pants he had worn from the hospital, a quite unflattering dull yellow color, and pulled one of the quilts over himself in a slow, half-hearted motion, complete with feel-sorry-for-me grunts of unhappiness.

_There he goes playing the pity card, like a little puppy that had messed on the floor and was looking for forgiveness even though it planned to do it again later anyway._

"You can take a shower in the morning if you want, it's down the hall on the left. if you promise not to use up all the hot water in Chicago." She said as she followed him in, taking off her earrings and laying them on the nightstand.

"Out, out damned spot..." his voice came out sounding muffled, his face pressed against the sheets.

"Very funny."

Nelson huffed a breath and rolled over onto his side. He wasn't smirking or sneering, as she had been expected. His face was tired, almost lifeless, as if the last ten minutes of bandying words had taken out whatever energy he had left. He wasn't faking it, that was for sure. Rachel sat gingerly on the bed and put one hand the his neck for a pulse count and the other to his forehead. Both were snatched away quickly. "Jesus, you're freezing! They let you out with a temp like this? Are you ok? Was it the Arip?"

She immediately began pulling more quilts on him and he shifted his body obligingly. "You know me" he coughed a bit , trying to pass it off. "I'm persuasive. This is all...going according...to plan."

"Oh ,please." Rachel got up briefly to lock the door and turn out the hall light. It was pushing midnight and she really wasn't in the mood to haul him back to the hospital. In fact, she was dead tired. All the wanted to do was crawl into bed - scratch that - crawl on to the couch and sleep. She came back to the bed and check his forehead again. Ugh. Brilliant. _Could nothing go right today? _She didn't even have water bottles, let alone a space heater.

"Ok. Listen to me carefully. I'm going to sleep in the bed."

"Heh...ok...so you're kicking me onto the couch because I'm cold?"

"No. You're staying in the bed. You need all the extra body heat you can get."

Nelson's jaw dropped slightly, but he caught himself. "No...no. You've got to be kidding."

"I'm not." Quite honestly, Rachel didn't care anymore. She was tired. She wanted the bed. And she wasn't about to leave him edging on hypothermia, since she was the one who signed him out. If he tried anything, she would beat the crap out of him. Not that he would, anyway. From the amazed and distinctly nervous look on his face (come to think of it, she had never seen him nervous. Nervousness was not a Nelson-ish trait) she could tell he would probably not even move a single muscle. Not giving him time enough to protest, she shrugged off her cardigan, pulled a long cotton sleepshirt off the hamper at the side of the bed, and whisked it on, deftly pulling off her blouse and skirt from underneath it. She may be sharing a bed with him but he sure as hell wasn't going to see her change, no matter how forgetfully unaware and doped up he would probably be soon. She felt like she was at girl scout camp, embarrassed to be seen naked in front of anyone. It didn't matter because he had turned over . Not bothering to turn off the dim bedroom light, she pushed aside the layers of quilts and slid into bed, nudging him with her leg and wincing at the chill of his skin. "Move over."

Nelson grunted reluctantly.

"Oh come on, move over."

"Fine" Nelson snapped darkly, and shoved himself over to the far side of the bed, as if he didn't want to be anywhere near her. Truth be told, he was beginning to shake a bit, not from the cold but from the fact that she was so incredibly close to him. This was going to be awkward. Very awkward. He had never felt so foolish...well, or quite so...hmmm...something else...

"No, not that far."

"What is this, a bedroom dictatorship? Jeez, I bet you damn well kicked Dave right over the side." He barked back at her, his own voice sounding tinny in his ears as the chemicals in his bloodstream fought to calm him back down.

"It's my bed, and you're going to sleep in it where I say. Move back over, just a little. There. Over, on your back."

"I don't like sleeping on my back."

Rachel reached over and grabbed him firmly by the shoulder, digging her nails in slightly to show she meant business. Nelson yelped in surprised and rolled over, only to find her pinning his shoulders down firmly and one leg across his knees. "Christ, Rachel, next time let me know and I'll bring some leather and handcuffs or something."

"You wish." she said levelly, not breaking her gaze.

"Yeah. Too bad. You could use the workout."

"What, as in sleeping with you?"

"Well...the sleeping would come afterwards." he tried to summon up a smirk to distract her from the fact that his whole body was beginning to quiver slightly. He wasn't about to give her the upper hand by knowing that she was getting to him. Well, getting to him was putting it mildly. The shivering intensified and he tried to pass it off by shifting his body, as if trying to get out from under her, still fighting the aripiprazole. But it was slowly winning. "You know you're curious."

"Are you kidding? I might catch something. Like a life-threatening case of snobbery."

She was giving him a look of death that somehow managed to be incredibly sexy... and he found himself wondering vaguely if she was this dominant with regards to..._whoa, no, stop it, right now._ He stared at the ceiling, trying to regain control over his body_. Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Just go to sleep. Pretend she's not there. _His mental pep-talk almost worked, until he felt her body up against his side and a small arm go around his chest. He sucked in a breath and the shaking began anew, and this time it was too violent to be missed. _Shit on a stick! Damn it! Damn it!_

"Your'e shivering. You should put your shirt back on...I don't have anything you can borrow..."

"I'm fine." The words came out through gritted teeth. But his body was instinctively drifting off into sleep at the feel of the bed beneath him and hew wasn't quite aware of what was going on.

"Are you kidding? You're shaking like a leaf."

"It's not from the cold!" he blurted out finally, angry both at himself and at her for putting him in a situation where he felt the weaker of the two. Now he felt like a complete idiot, his attempts at snide remarks shattered.

"Then what is it?"

"You know what it is. Stop baiting me." His words had been reduced to soft, slurred grunts and sleep finally won its battle with conciousness.

Rachel sighed. Her body was also dragging her towards sleep, and she was definitely not up for the kind of conversation that was going to get started if she replied. Ignoring the new round of goosebumps that coursed along his skin, she moved her body closer against him, trying to cover as much surface area as possible to warm him up without blatantly crossing the thin line of propriety. The only place to put her head was in the crook of his shoulder, and he flinched as he felt her breath on his neck. She was asleep within a few minutes.


	2. Not Over Yet

Why I am thinking about this - standing in the shower and wondering why this God damn city water takes so long to get warm - I don't know. I'm twenty-five. My life is over. Over at twenty-five, having already experienced both the most incredible, brilliant success and the most pathetic failure. I have fifty or so years left in my life, to do what? Nothing. Plod through the rest of this mind-numbing degree, get a job, make money, spend the rest of my days sitting around at home and reading outdated novels in order to pretend I have some sort of rich inner life. There is nothing left. The kicker is, no one is even going to know about it. No _60 Minutes_, no books, no Time magazine, no adoring cult of young scientists following in my footsteps, lavishing my name with praise and referring to me as _the_ Dr. Wright. Nope, nothing. Nothing but a few scars, which, by the way, I'm going to have to make up excuses for eventually, and a lot of pity. Pity? Never wanted it, not by a long shot. But I'm not sure what the hell I want right now. I think I just want to crawl back into bed like a scorned dog with Rachel, not caring that the only reason's she's here is also, again, out of pity.

I woke up this morning and nearly had a heart attack. Practically fell right out of bed. Ever woken up to realize you're not alone? I honestly don't even remember her getting into bed with me. So, like I said, jumped a mile and nearly fell flat on my ass out of bed, like someone had dumped a box of snakes into my lap. She didn't wake up. I actually pathetically tried to crawl, slither, whatever the most wretched word I can think of, back in as quietly as I could. And I'm only a few tenuous strands of temper away from beating my head into this disgustingly-colored tile because of what I did next. I was still half-asleep, half frightened, and completely confused, and before I knew it I was right next to her again. I'd never been so scared in my entire fucking life. And I don't get scared. Ever. I couldn't move my eyes. Her face was right next to mine. Beauty and the god damn Beast, how about that.

And then, to utterly compound my idiocy, I tried to talk, to tell her something. Not that she would have heard. And even if she had, it wouldn't have mattered, because words didn't come out. What came out was a noise, halfway in between a sigh and a...yeah. A whine. Christ. A whine, one even more pathetic than Champ could ever have made, no matter how many bones in his scrawny back were broken. A _whine_. A _puppy whine_.

At that point, my brain finally lurched back into gear and I hightailed it to the bathroom, and proceeded to throw up whatever bile was in my stomach. Giant, mutated butterflies clawing away in my stomach, some sort of sick joke on the feeling you get when you're ten years old and the girl you like, instead of sticking her tongue out at you and scowling like a pigtailed thundercloud, actually smiles. Actually, I still feel like throwing up. Congratulations Rachel, you've not only completely screwed up my head, you've now completely screwed up my body as well. Guess you have everything now, don't you? And you pretend you don't see a God damned thing. What do I have to do, walk across the room with the words tattooed across my nose?

But yeah, that's right, I keep forgetting - you don't have to remind me. I'm the asshole. Every class needs one. The rich, smart asshole. Not nice enough, not nearly handsome or suave enough, just an incredibly uptight guy with a Napoleon complex - nothing important enough to drag your attention away from yourself., You're just looking for another daddy. A sweet ole guy, with a brain the size of a squirrel's , who will "yes, dear" and "no, dear" and '"I love you dear" you, and tell you how wonderful and beautiful you are every second of the day. Whereas me, well - I'd tell you hell no if I felt like it, I'd say yes, you do look fat in that dress, I'd never openly say that you're any smarter than I am and would never, ever admit to being completely under your thumb, but I can guarantee you those idiots couldn't hold a candle, Rachel, couldn't even hold a goddam _match_, to what I feel, the twisting, wrenching feeling in my gut every time I see you, or even hear your voice for that matter.

You don't even know, you can't even fucking _imagine, _the horror that I felt when I knew I couldn't bring you back, and you were just lying there on the gurney like some raggedy, lifeless piece of trash, somehow still heart-stoppingly...bad pun...excuse me...beautiful even under the maddening whine of the machines.. If you hadn't come back, believe me, that entire bottle of potassium would be in my arm and a bullet straight through my head, and there wouldn't have been a damn thing Joe, Dave, or Steckle could have done, even all together, to stop me.

Intensity scares you, doesn't it?

I scare you, don't I?

"NELSON!"

"What?" Nelson muttered loudly his throat even more scratchy than usual from the long sleep. He whipped around in the shower, nearly slipping.

"I only have one bathroom, you've been in there for thirty minutes!" Rachel's infuriated shout sounded over the patter of the running water.

Nelson growled and pressed his forehead against the tile. His body was shrieking for nicotine, or something, right now, and he felt like if he moved he would just lose it and scream at her.

"Nelson?' Rachel's voice came again, softer.

"WHAT?!?!" He lost it and his voice rose to an outraged roar.

"Nelson, its been an hour and a half...are you okay?"

_What_?

"It's been what?"

"An hour and a half."

"You said thirty minutes."

"Nelson? That was an hour ago. Answer me, are you all right?"

_Oh no. You've got to be kidding me Don't think about it. Blacking out. Losing some small chunks of time. Normal, normal , normal when your brain has been under stress or injury. _

"Alright, keep your shirt on."

_Normal, it's all right. Calm down. _But he wasn't so sure. Unless Rachel was pulling his leg, sixty minutes had just disappeared. Like they hadn't even been there. Sixty minutes in three seconds. He turned the shower off with a quick flick of the wrist. As if to prove to her he could get out of the shower as slowly or a quickly as he pleased, he shook the water from his hair like a dog and threw a towel around his waist, not bothering to dry himself off. Barging out of the bathroom and not bothering to stop and look, he ran smack into Rachel. Boom. And stop. She had been coming down the narrow hallway to the bathroom as soon as she had heard the handle turn, eyes down, not looking where she was going.

Well.

The polite thing would have been to exchange excuse me's, and continue on, but they both froze like a pair of deer in the headlights of a roaring Mack truck. It was as if they were afraid to even twitch a muscle, for fear that something even worse might happen if they did. 

Seconds ticked by. One.

Two.

Three.

Tick, tock, tick, tock.

His chest was still flush with hers, and the water on his skin was slowly seeping onto her shirt, spreading like a colorless bloodstain.

Five.

Six.

Seven.

And then, something in Nelson snapped. The careful, intricate machinery of the switches of the emotional side of his brain, most of which had remained for almost his entire life in the 'off' position - for so long that no one, not even he, was even sure that they still worked - all short-circuited simultaneously. He didn't even have to move his head or his arms that far. Rachel yelped in surprise he suddenly pressed his mouth against hers, hard, and his hands grasped her sides with just enough force to convey an almost fervent concentration, but also with barely, just barely, enough care to prevent fear from rising in her throat. But the roar of electricity in Nelson head, the loudest sound he had ever heard, was cut short as he felt her nails dig into the skin of his hands, forcing him to release her. As he leaned his head back, gasping in a short breath as his lips left hers, he felt a stinging crack on the tender part of his cheek. Rachel backed away, her hand still raised from the slap, her forehead screwed up in a combination of confusion and anger. Her brown eyes burned almost amber, forcing him to take another step back. She opened her mouth, only slightly, and her voice was almost inaudible. But as each word fell, he felt like she was slapping him again with each syllable. "Don't...ever...touch me again. Ever."

Suddenly, Nelson realized how foolish he must look - half-naked, dripping wet, with a reddening cheek and an expression of bewilderment. The emotional switchboard rebooted, like a computer coming back from shutdown, and the switched all returned to default - OFF. The blue in his eyes darkened as he slitted them, returning her furious gaze, as if to say, y_ou think I'm going to say I'm sorry?_

_Well I'm not. I'm not sorry. Not one miniscule bit. You've had my balls on a chain for the past three years and now it's coming back to bite you in the ass. I'm not sorry._

"If you ever -" Rachel began, her voice getting louder and picking up speed. But Nelson interrupted her harshly.

"Don't even start. You deserved it."

"Excuse me?! Deserved what? That? Your pitiful seduction attempt?" Her eyes went as wide as saucers and her dark eyebrows knitted together above them. In a swift, fluid movement, she hurled the towel she was carrying at him. "I'm sick and tired of this! Fine, I don't give a crap about your feelings anymore, Nelson. You want to know why you could never, never, ever have even the most remotely miniscule chance with me? Do you?"

"Enlighten me, please."

"Because you're cold. There is nothing, _nothing_ under that skin. Everyone falls into two categories with you - useful and useless, and you don't care about either of them. You use the useful to your own advantage, and ignore everyone else. You're so incredibly full of yourself , its disgusting. No one means anything to you except to further your own career, goals, wants, needs, whatever, but it's still all about you. You couldn't sacrifice one single thing for another person. You couldn't _handle _being in a relationship, because you couldn't bear to tear yourself away from yourself for a single second. You couldn't love me, you couldn't take care of me, you couldn't dance with me to some stupid country song at a bar because I've had to much to drink, you couldn't drive out in the rain to pick me up because my car broke down at four in the morning coming back from the graveyard shift, you couldn't come with me to my father's grave every June and hold me when I started to cry, or anything like that. You're _nothing _to me." Rachel ran out of breath, having been talking so furiously that she hadn't even bothered to pause.

The silence that followed was so heavy it seemed to bear down on both of their shoulders.

"You don't know that."

It was soft. Very soft, almost inaudible, the scratchy tone almost completely gone, and at least a few pitches higher. And hurt.

"I don't know what?"

There was another long pause and Nelson seemed to shake off a bit of his surprise, and slowly began to walk past her.

"Nelson - "

She reached out and put a hand on his shoulder as he passed. He didn't stop, or shake it off, he just kept walking, like he hadn't even noticed.

"NELSON!"

"WHAT??"

He slipped on the tile this time, barely managing to keep upright by grabbing the silver bar on the side of the shower. Over the mirror, the lightbulbs flickered simultaneously, causing stars to sparkle in front of his eyes for a minute. Shower? What shower? He was out of the shower. And what the hell was up with the lights?

"I only have one bathroom, you've been in there for thirty minutes!"

He blinked slowly. The water was running in his eyes and he moved his head out of the stream, shaking his hair away from his eyes. _I'm back in the shower. Still in the shower? _Like Alice being dropped down the rabbit hole, he had no idea where he was or how he had gotten there. The water had gone from hot to only lukewarm. His skin felt tingly and he was slightly dizzy, as if the heat had caused him to sweat out all the moisture in his body. He regained his footing slowly, trying to process what had just happened. Breathe, just breathe for a minute. But his lungs wouldn't obey. As his mind raced, they worked to the point of hyperventilation, until he felt like he would pass out. Shakily he turned the water off and tried to keep breathing in the steamy, humid air of the bathroom. Nothing had happened. Or had any of it happened? His breath refused to slacken its pace and he had to hold himself against the wall with the bar again. But his grip was too weak. There was a vague sensation of falling, like going down in a elevator too fast, and he thought he heard the dull cracking sound of his head hitting the side of the tub. And then everything dissolved into a hot, humid darkness.


	3. From the Horse's Mouth

It was warm still, but his skin felt remarkably cold now. That is, he was moderately sure it was his skin he was feeling. It was some sort of aura hovering around him, rich with a fine meshwork of nerve endings. They didn't seem quite physical, more mental, because every time he tried to get his mind to think, he could feel the synapses pulse. He cleared his throat and tried to speak, but words didn't come out. A sort of raspy breath issued from his lips instead, and he felt a movement beside him in response. There was something touching his face now, and he heard a noise. It was very faint, like something echoing down a tunnel, but after a moment it became a human voice. "Nelson?"

He tried again to speak and open his eyes. Not being aware of his body, it was purely reflexive movement borne from the habitual center of his brain, but it was surprisingly effective. He was suddenly blasted with light and color and he shut them again with a slight cry at the intensity.

"Nelson, it's okay. Do you know where you are? Where are you? What's my name?"

The voice was female, that he was sure of. "Rachel?"

"Good, now where are you?"

"I don't know."

"You're here, on the couch. How many fingers am I holding up?"

"I...I can't see right now. I'm on the couch?"

His body was indeed lying on something lumpy, but moderately comfortable.

"You fainted in the shower. I got you out and put you here. You're heavy, you know that?"

"You got me out?" Even in his semi-awake state, he felt a sting of embarrassment at the idea of Rachel hauling his naked, unconscious body out of the shower and dragging him over to the couch. At least he felt some sort of blanket over himself now. He tried opening his eyes again, slowly, and focused on the shape leaning over him. Slowly, features came into view. Brown eyes, a mass of curly hair, and he saw the it was indeed Rachel.

"Barely. Do you remember what happened? You cut your head pretty bad...there was a lot of blood on the floor."

"No."

"Nelson. I'm worried about you."

It was a very simple sentence, but it was the way she said it that made him take in a surprised breath. She didn't look at him when she said it, but instead her eyes dropped down where he realized she was holding his hand. Gingerly, and with both of her own, but that didn't matter. She had holding his hand, and as she spoke she seemed to become troubled, and intertwined and released her fingers with his repetitively. Her touch held little, if any, suggestiveness - it was the gentleness of it that got to him.

"That's good."

"Good?"

"Not good, I mean...I like having you worry about me."

"Well I don't like it. I have enough to worry about without you."

"Wait, I was trying to say thank you."

"You never were good at saying thank you. But your welcome."

"I don't think I am."

"Welcome? Nelson, I don't hate you. You just drive me insane sometimes. You're my friend."

"Hmm." _Not what I wanted to hear. _"Am I going to stay here?"

"If you keep fainting and getting cold spells, then yes...unless you want to stay with Dave or Randy."

"Not really. I don't like - "

"Living with other guys, yeah you've told me."

"Because -"

"I know, I know, because they're messy and dirty and will use your things and bring over...what was the term you used?"

"Wenches." Nelson tried to smile a little but only the already-curled side of his mouth lifted. "Where will I sleep?"

"You're lying on it."

"No bed anymore? Are you afraid you'll be too tempted to take advantage of me? What with my charm and wit and tendency to get blood all over your bathroom?"

"Propriety. Besides, I've already seen you naked. Curiosity satisfied."

He was again hit by a slight wave of embarrassment. "Er...hmm. Satisfaction, eh?"

Rachel tilter her head and got up. He only just realized she had been kneeling down by the couch. "Don't start. I need to go to rounds now...you're still on leave for as long as you need, according to the school board, you know."

"You can't stay?" the words were out before he had thought them through, and he nearly bit his tongue afterwards. This entire recovery business was turning him into some sort of meek little lamb, and even though it seemed to hit Rachel's fancy to some degree, he sure as hell didn't like it.

Rachel paused and shouldered her bag, which had been lying on the armrest. "I can't...they need me at rounds, and then I have Histopath all day...unless you really need me to?"

The doctor in her was coming out, he could see it. The kind, caring beautiful young female doctor. That was what he was always so jealous of her about. Her compassion. It was sickeningly sweet. It was ridiculously unneeded. And yet it was something that he couldn't bring himself to have. But he wasn't thinking about all of the qualities that Rachel had that he did not at the moment. Right now the only thing he could bring himself to focus on was the feel of her hand on his.

"Well, I'd like you to."

"Like isn't enough, Nelson, you're a big boy and you can take a few hours by yourself." The compassion was edged with frustration. Damn. He guessed that she reserved the patience that went along with the compassion for actual patients. Not assholes-turned-mad-scientists with egos so big they had trouble getting through doors who harbored a disgustingly fanatical unrequited love for her. God damn it. One chance, that's all I ask for, one.

**LATER ON THAT DAY**

"I don't know if he's okay...he blacked out this morning."

"Blacked out?"

"Yeah, as in fell down and cracked his head."

"Christ." Steckle bit his lower lip and looked up from the histology slide. Rachel hadn't moved her eyes from her own, as if she wasn't quite able to drag her focus in either direction - the current conversation, or a nectrotic piece of pancreas. They were the only two left in the histology lab, a large, bare room reminiscent of some sort of endless hallways of computers with people hooked up to them...except here, it was frazzled medical students and microscopes. It was pushing eight o'clock at night, and both of their eyesights were beginning to fail. "Do you think it's brain damage? I mean come on, he was under for twelve minutes. Twelve minutes, that might as well be eternity, y'know?"

"I'm not a neurologist, I don't know. The scans said he was fine." She was having trouble keeping her long eyelashes out of the lens of the scope, and was moving her head slightly from side to side like a bird.

"Yeah but those scans aren't always a hundred percent, especially since they only did one. They only did one, right?"

"Randy!" Rachel blew her hair out of her face and looked up. "Please, I'm stressed to all hell right now and I don't need to be second guessing anything else."

It was true, the last thing she needed right now was to be doubting a frigging MRI. But then again, a lot of things she had doubted in the past had been made true in the past few weeks. But it didn't seem like brain damage. Nelson was very aware, almost himself...it was just here and there, things that pushed her worry button - his rapidly changing moods, blacking out, the strange look on his face when he had woken up, as if he couldn't remember where he was..._I feel like I'm looking after a lost dog sometimes. Well, maybe not a big dog. Medium sized dog that doesn't slobber...wow, I need to sleep more. _The truth was she hadn't slept well at all the night before. She had been tired enough, that was for sure - the hours spent at the emergency room constantly checking the time, and asking everyone in a white coat that went by about the results of a specific set of CT and MRI scans, had been exhausting. Crying for three hours definitely tires you out. But when your friend has just come back from the brink of death, and you have no idea if they are ever going to be able to walk, talk, or think again, especially a friend that could think as well as Nelson...well , it wouldn't just be a loss to her, it would be a loss to the medical profession. But she couldn't shake off the feeling of discomfort at being in bed with him, combined with the mutterings and twitches that went on all night long. It sounded like bad dreams, but she hadn't wanted to wake him.

Steckle sat back in the chair, his heavy brows knitted with worry. He looked like a large, concerned walrus. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry...it's just, well, beyond the entire absurdity of being dead for that long, and now all of these weird repercussions...I guess I just thought it was over. Wham bam, over, no more crazy near-death experienced, back to normal medical school hell, you know? The kind of hell we can deal with. I mean, I know its not necessarily anything, anything , well, I guess you'd say anything supernatural. But still, wouldn't it be incredible if something inside his head had changed?"

"Changed?"

Steckle's voice increased in pitch as he tented his fingers under his chin. "Yeah, I mean, who knows the changes a brain undergoes during death. Physiologically speaking."

"Atrophy."

"Not necessarily - we have no idea."

"Randy, I really don't want to talk about this right now." She had a soft spot for Randy, and always had, but he definitely had a tendency to not know when to shut up.

"Sorry, sorry. Sorry again. He's still staying with you then is he?"

"Yeah."

Steckle raised one eyebrow curiously and Rachel narrowed her eyes. "What's that look for?"

"Nothing. It's going well?"

"Aside from constant bickering and random blackouts, yes."

"How's he taking it? Living with you, I mean."

_Well, I'd like you to._

"I guess he seems to be okay with it."

"Just okay?"

Rachel turned off the light to the scope and carefully placed the slide back in the slidebox, being careful not to tap the corners against any of the others. Something was telling her that she really didn't want to be looking at it anymore. "Care to extrapolate on your line of questioning?"

"Well, you know." He drew out the last two words, as if she _should_ know what he was talking about.

She gave him a blank look.

"You know. Wait, you do know?"

"Know what?"

"Well, him, and you, and all of that -"

"That he takes delight in being a misogynist pig and pretending to want to get into my pants just to piss me off?"

Steckle let out a chuckle. "You've got to be kidding. Oh jeez Rachel." But seeing the blank, slightly annoyed look on her face had not changed, his mouth opened slightly. "Okay, wait. No kidding around. No kidding around?"

"Nope."

"You do know then?"

"I have absolutely, positively no idea what you're talking about." Rachel stood up took her bag from the back of the chair, swinging it around one shoulder, as if to tell him that if he didn't make his point quickly, she would be out the door.

Steckle stood up too, neglecting to turn off his scope. "Wow, oh man, this is big. This is huge."

"What's huge?"

"Rachel, hang on a second. You remember first year Anatomy class? The very first day?"

"Yes."

"You remember how all hell broke loose at me and Nelson's table when you came in, and we both got kicked out of the first lab?"

"Yeah. It was pretty funny, actually."

"Well, it was because the second you came into the lab, Nelson completely froze up and dropped his dissection kit on the floor. His scalpel went right into the lab coordinators foot, and then I started laughing, and we both got thrown out."

Rachel stared for a minute, and then broke into peals of laughter. Steckle took the time to turn off his scope and grab his things. "No, no, it's not funny."

"Actually, it is." she managed to get out in between gasps.

"Ok Rachel, Rachel? Listen. You listening?"

"Ahem...heeheeahmeahem..okay...listening."

"He's been completely obsessed with you for three years. Ok, maybe obsessed is a bad word. He told me two months after that first class that he was in love with you. I have never, ever heard him say that about anyone, and I've known this guy since high school. I don't even think I've heard him say the word any other time except then. I didn't think he _could _say it, I mean, love isn't exactly a word you would think to find in Nelson's vocabulary. You had no idea? Yeah, yeah I know about the asshole thing. It's kind of a self-preservation thing with him. He plays it up so he doesn't get all nervous and -"

"Drop more things?" Rachel quipped, but the color was draining slowly from her face. The door to the outside hallway was forgotten and her hands were stiffly at her sides.

"Well, you know how much he likes being 'master and commander' everything he can get a hold of. Losing his composure would be the worst thing to him. So...he does what he does best - be a prick. But seriously, you couldn't tell? We all thought you knew."

"Who is _we all_?"

"Y'know, us. Me, Joe, Dave, now you, maybe a few others here and there around school."

Rachel didn't know if she should feel outraged or embarrassed at the idea of everyone talking behind her back. It was quite possible that Steckle was mistaken...Nelson was good at putting on acts...but then again they had been friends for almost ten years now, and if anyone knew Nelson, Randy Steckle did. But seriously...it didn't make sense, his behavior around her for the past three years, if what Steckle was saying was true. Or did it? In some weird, twisted, Nelson-way make sense?

"Randy, promise me you're not putting me on."

"I swear. Ask Joe, or Dave."

Rachel cringed slightly at the idea of asking Dave. Things were still a bit awkward between them since the decision to not pursue a relationship had been made...she _had_ wondered why he had seemed so accepting of the idea. Maybe not wanting to step on someone else's territory? Steckle noticed her reaction and scuffed a shoe against the floor. "Yeah, as if you couldn't tell, he was none to thrilled about you and Dave, especially since Dave was his friend. Kind of one of those unspoken male bonding things - don't go after the girl your friend likes. But you and Dave are...what exactly are you right now?"

"We're nothing, just friends" Her voice was distant.

_But Dave does, doesn't he?_

Nelson's snide remark from a few days ago came back to her mind. There had been acute jealousy, almost a tone of feeling betrayed, in his voice. She hadn't been able to place it then. And all of the drama when Dave had gone under, Nelson half-playing with Dave's life, trying to get a reaction out of her, to probe her feelings. And then again, when she herself had gone under, she had come to only to find Nelson a shaky mess, and Joe had told her later that he had been on the verge of a nervous breakdown when it became obvious that bringing her back was going to be an act of pure luck. It all fit, true. But Nelson? For goodness sake, the guy couldn't possibly care about anything more than himself. That was just how he was. How he had been for years. He was the most self-centered, snobbish, emotionless, nasty person she knew. She considered him a friends mostly through the others. But it seemed that yet another thing she thought she had known for sure was changing.

Steckle tilted his head to one side like a bulldog confused as to what it's owner wanted. "Rach? Hey, I, uh, didn't mean to be the one to break the news, we seriously though you knew. Don't shoot the messenger."

Deep breath. Rachel opened the door and exited, waiting for Steckle to catch up with her. She didn't feel like walking alone right now. She needed some kind of jabber to get her mind off of it - and if anyone could talk a mile and minute about nothing in particular, it was Randall Steckle, Esq. "Thanks for the heads-up. I guess. It's okay, I'll get over it."

"Get over it? Get over what?"

"Feeling like I just got hit by the El-train."


	4. Waiting for Something

But the feeling didn't go away, especially as she found herself being greeted by Nelson's gravelly voice as soon as she walked in the door. "Rachel?"

"Yeah?"

"Come here. Just for a minute."

Rachel slung her bag halfheartedly over the coat-rack and walked into the living room. Nelson was sitting on the couch, leaning forwards, with his elbows on his knees. He seemed to be absorbed in something, but she looked around and saw nothing he could possibly be interested in. The floor, the messy coffee table, the blank TV...what was he looking at? Rather than ask, she stood next to the side of the couch and watched him. He didn't respond, or move. He just kept staring straight ahead. Rachel shifted from foot to foot as one minute, and then two minutes ticked by, with Nelson remaining unmoving. She wondered if he was having some sort of blackout again, and cleared her throat softly. "Hey, Nelson, you there?"

"I'm here."

"What am I waiting for?" She looked him over and realized he looked only much less groomed than normal. He hadn't shaved yet and was still dressed in the clothes he had gone to bed in, like he had gotten interrupted by something in the middle of his morning routine. Something that evidently he was still very much focused on.

"I'm...not sure."

"Are you sure you're ok?" She felt like it was the millionth time she had asked that question. Nelson didn't answer. He continued staring straight ahead, unblinking. The muscles in his shoulders were taut, like he was lifting something imaginary.

Another minute rolled by.

"Oo-kay..." Rachel rolled her eyes and gave up, going into the kitchen to get a glass of water. Whatever he was playing at, it was too weird for her to deal with at the moment. Maybe this was another one of his little games. It was like a five year old throwing rocks at the girl he liked. Might as well bring it out in the open, she thought. With certain things, Rachel could remain quiet to the grave, especially if they concerned things that had hurt her. No one had known about her father. Nelson and Steckle may have had an inkling, but they by no means knew the full story. She wasn't the type to go around airing anyone's dirty laundry in public. But when it came to situations like this, where the awkwardness was just going to become unbearable, living in such close quarters with him, it was better to just slug it out right here.

"So, I had an interesting talk with Randy today."

"Hmm."

Rachel turned on the tap. _Here we go_. "He told me that you've been in love with me for three years."

WhhhhzzzzzCRASH. The words were barely out of her mouth when a quick, sliding sound followed by the sound of breaking glass, made her jump. She whirled around and stared. Nelson was still sitting on the couch, but now he was looking at her with a combination of surprise, anxiety, and something else she didn't recognize. One of the metal coasters on the far edge of the coffee table, the ones with the nice hammered copper design that her mother had given her as last Christmas, was across the room. It had crashed into a glass vase by the door. He couldn't have thrown it. He was too far away from it.

Rachel backed against the counter, placing her glass on the counter with a shaky hand. "Nelson?"

He didn't answer, but kept looking at her like a terrified deer caught in the headlights of a dozen Mack trucks. She couldn't tell if he was more afraid of what Randy had told her, or about what had just happened. Right now, the latter was the only thing she was thinking about.

"Nelson, how did that coaster get over there?"

"I don't know." He spoke quickly, like it was a default answer spat out by his brain in response to that kind of questioning.

"Oh. Um. Was that...what you were trying -"

"I've been doing it all morning. Accidently. It doesn't always happen, I don't know why it does or doesn't.." he voice rose in pitch slighty and his words came even faster, and he looked away. Rachel looked back at the coffee table and noticed another coaster beginning to quiver.

"Nelson, calm down."

"Easy for you to say, you're not making shit fly around!"

WhhhzzzTHUD

The other coaster veered off to the left, hitting am armchair.

"Shi-it!" Nelson wailed, and clapped his hands to his forehead. "This is not happening. This is not some god damn science fiction piece of flaming shit..."

"Calm down, Nelson, calm down." Rachel took a careful step towards him as he kept on spewing profanities. Her own gait was unsteady, and she was grateful when she reached the couch and could sit down next to him. His entire body was shaking, and her refused to raise his head or remove his tightly clenched fists from his forehead. "Relax, please, try to relax. I'm calling the others."

"No." He raised his head quickly and they were suddenly nose to nose. Rachel backed off instinctively but kept her hands on his shoulders.

"Look, you don't know what's going on, I sure as hell don't know what's going on," she took a pause to swallow, her throat getting dryer and tighter by the second, "but maybe they do. Remember they were there too. Maybe Randy knows."

"Steckle doesn't know his ass from the chair!" Nelson's voice was a frightening mixture of snarl and whimper, and he shook her hands off, sliding to the corner of the couch like a wounded animal. But Rachel was already dialing.


	5. Curiosity

_They were talking about him like he wasn't even there. _

_Like he was some sort of pet rat._

_A little pet rat that had just done something amazing, and now they were all ooh-ing and aah-ing and deciding what maze to put him in next. _

If it wasn't for Rachel sitting next to him with one arm lightly around his waist, he would have exploded at the lot of them long ago, and told them to go perform various lewd acts upon themselves, their mothers and sisters in as many eloquently profane terms as he knew.

"Wait, are we talking like some kind of telepathic stuff?"

"Telekinesis, Joe"

"It's NOT telekinesis, Steckle, stop trying to blow this up just to get it into the hogwash you call a book."

"No, I read about this. Right temporal lobe of the brain, activated by period of extreme stress, traumatic experiences and," Steckle paused for dramatic effect, "_near death experiences_. Near death experiences! I mean, no one really has any frigging idea what the right temporal lobe does, it has some function memory, but the rest of it is completely uncharted territory. A little bit of visionary, a little bit of PK, a little bit of just about everything. "

"So..." Dave calmly interrupted, as it seemed Steckle was getting so excited he was falling out of his chair. "We're saying that the twelve minutes under caused some sort of _increased_ brain activity? Would have shown up on the MRI, wouldn't it?"

"Not necessarily, not if its being developed."

"Developed? Like he can control what he does? Sometime later, or something?" Joe raised both eyebrows sleepily. He had been on a twelve hour shift at the emergency ward and had been practically nodding off already when Rachel had phoned him around nine-thirty. Dave was, as always, the most skeptical. His narrow eyes flickered back and forth between Steckle and Nelson, ignoring Joe, who was nodding off again. They had been going back and forth about this for the past hour, with mostly Steckle rambling on about brain function and the rest of them trying to get a word in edgewise.

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves on this one, okay guys? I don't think any of us really want to go back to what happened."

"This isn't going back, this is going forwards! Going _forwards_, get it?" Steckle seemed very proud of his new catchy phrase and to everyone's annoyance, began rustling around in his pockets for his dictaphone.

A low, growly voice came from the couch. Nelson sounded like he was about to beat the living hell out of each and every one of them "I'd appreciate it if we could all stop talking about me like I'm not sitting right the f-"

Rachel gave his waist a tap as he was about to start cursing again, and he swallowed the word he was about to say. "Like I'm not sitting right here."

"Sorry." Steckle enthusiasm seemed dampened. "It's just, come on Nelson, even you have to admit this is big. This may even be bigger than what you did before."

"Yeah, start thinking 60 Minutes again." Joe chuckled.

Another squeeze from Rachel's hand made Nelson balk at a cutting retort.

"Rachel." Dave said levelly. "Are you absolutely positive that's what happened?"

"Positive."

Dave sat back in the couch, trying to work his knotted back muscles into some semblance of a comfortable position in the ratty upholstery. He had been in surgery lab rotation and had been just about to try and relax with a good, hot shower and a beer...but, as always, something had to happen. And it had to involve Nelson. Christ, the guy was his friend, had been for years, but it was getting to the point of being ridiculous.

He had honestly begun to wonder if Nelson's second attempt had been the equivalent of a bratty teenager's cry for help. _You'll miss me! You'll all miss me when I'm gone! _

If he had _really_ wanted to die, would he have left all the monitors up, and left the defibrillators charged? Wouldn't he had destroyed the battery, or cut the power, so there was no way of them bringing him back in time? And what was the point of calling Rachel, if not to get them all over there, frantic, panicked, and having to throw themselves into saving his sorry ass.

The more Dave thought, the more resentment started to build in his stomach. "Nelson. If you're putting us on..."

"I'm not putting you on, _Dave_." The name almost seemed distasteful in Nelson's mouth. Hmm. It was obvious the feeling of resentment was still quite mutual. "_I_ didn't call you here. _She _did."

The two stared at each other from across the small living room and even Steckle didn't dare to break the awkward but angry silence that followed. The soft whirr of his dictaphone stopped with a clikc as he turned it off with a pudgy thumb. Dave's eyes were steady, calm, with one eyebrow slightly raised as if to say _come on...i know you're putting them on, and you know it too. _Nelson's were cold and glaring. In fact, Rachel could swear that his nostrils were flaring slightly, like a horse about to strike out at a rival. She decided to break in before it could get any more uncomfortable...or worse.

"Okay, lets everyone deflate your balls just a tad, please. Well, we're not going to get anywhere tonight. Joe? Joe!"

"Wha? What?"

"Look, we're all tired, and getting nowhere. Lets talk about this tomorrow at a time when we're not all dying to get to sleep. I'm sorry I called you guys over...I just, I don't know, though we all should get together about this. Since we were all kind of involved."

"Unfortunately." The grating tone in Nelson's voice signaled to everyone that it was time to drop the subject and go home.

_You're just tourists._

Dave stood up, jerking his head to urge an unwilling Steckle and droopy-eyed Joe to their feet. "Lets' go. You guys need a ride?"

"I might."

"Steckle?"

"Nah, I'm fine."

After they had all left, Rachel stood up and locked the door. She felt emotionally exhausted...and the entire conversation regarding Steckle and Nelson has gone completely untouched. She sighed out loud as Nelson hauled himself to his feet. "Rachel?"

She turned and tried to meet his eyes, but failed. Instead, she turned off the hall light and began walking to the bedroom, as if she could dissuade him from continuing by leaving the room. "Sorry about bringing them, I was just...well, worried. I'm going to bed. Do you think you'll be up for going to class at all tomorrow?"

"I don't know. But that wasn't what I was going to ask."

"What then?" She stopped in the hallway and looked back.

Any remnant of the bristling match that had gone on between him and Dave had left Nelson's appearance. He was staring at the floor and shifting his weight back and forth, obviously unnerved. "I don't want to be alone right now."

"You're not alone, I'm right here in the apartment."

"I meant -"

"I know what you meant. And I don't really think sleeping with me again -"

"Is it because of the 'interesting conversation' you had?" He looked up at her, but his face was unreadable. Like he was blanking his emotions before taking a hit.

"Could be."

"Well." Nelson coughed, then swallowed, and forced the words out. "It's true."

"You never said anything."

"I know."

"You've been a complete jerk."

"I know."

"And you've spent three years thoroughly convincing me you're a jerk, and I don't change my mind easily."

"I know." His voice was a flat as his face, like a broken record. Unwilling to admit defeat, unwilling to admit weakness, unwilling to admit wrongdoing, anything...just completely flat. It was far from endearing. In fact, it was beginning to get on her nerves.

"You -" But she stopped there. Berating him on past behavior was going to do nothing but either draw them into an all out verbal war or beat him down farther than he already was. She swallowed the litany of abuses that were about to come out of her mouth and sighed instead. Despite all of it, it really just came down to one thing. "You...you should have said something."

He nodded almost imperceptibly, and sat back down on the couch, as if resigned to the fact that he was getting nowhere. "Should have said something. I'll remember that."

Rachel stood there for a moment, watching him. She bit her lip again and tied her hair back with the elastic band that was forever around her wrist, and then continued on down the hall. Her last words were almost inaudible, but Nelson heard them. "I'll leave the door open. You can come in if you want."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

He didn't.

Rachel woke up and felt what at first seemed like a strange sense of disappointment, but quickly shook it off. She threw on her robe and came out into the living room, only to find the couch was unoccupied. _At least there aren't random object thrown all over the room_, she thought. It was then that her eyes found the clock. It was nine thirty. Anatomy lab had already started.

"No!" She shrieked curses that would make a sailor blush and scrambled to get herself ready. He must have gone ahead to class. Without waking her up? JERK!

Five minutes later she was walking as fast as she could without looking too frantic down the streets towards the medical center, bookbag hung loosely over one shoulder and hair still mussed form bed, flying in every direction. A few people stared on the way, but most people in Chicago could pick a medical student out of the crowd. They were always hurrying, half dressed, half awake, and not aware of much else except getting to wherever they needed to be. She didn't bother stopping for coffee, no, no time. Up the steps and down a few hallways, and into the Anatomy lab in record time. She peeked inside. Okay, everyone was busy dissecting, scalpels in hand like good little doctor-to-be...she could probably sneak in without the lab coordinator noticing. She saw Joe glance over towards the door and notice her through the glass. He looked over his shoulder towards the instructors' table, and then made a quick gesture with his hands. Rachel opened the door as quickly and as quietly as possible and race-walked over to her and Joe's lab bench.

"Sorry" she was practically out of breath. "Slept late."

"It's okay, I did too." Joe cracked his trademark smile, although it was a bit more lopsided that usual, betraying his remaining exhaustion. "We're just doing patellar ligaments, no big deal. I already have them exposed. Just get your stuff out, quick."

Rachel rummaged through her bag and brought out her notebook and dissection kit, but her eyes were roaming around the room. Steckle and Nelson were in their usual places at the far side. Steckle was standing a few more steps than normal away from Nelson, who looked like he had had all the time in the world to get ready this morning. Shaved, groomed, same crisp white shirt and black pants, glasses perfectly in place (he had obviously gotten them back from Steckle). Completely composed, like he hadn't just sneaked out of her apartment, not even having the decency to try and wake her up for the same damn class. Ignoring her kit for the moment, Rachel adjusted her clothes and hair from the brisk walk, and strode over to their table. Nelson didn't even look at her until she tapped him on the shoulder.

He looked up slowly, languidly, raising one eyebrow, as if he _couldn't possibly _understand why she was trying to bother him during class. "Ye-es?"

"Thanks for trying to wake me up."

"I was busy."

Rachel's hand twitched. She could have slapped him for that, but she didn't want to do it in the middle of class. But then again, maybe he deserved it. The rest of lab passed without incident, and soon it was time for a quick hour break before afternoon rounds. Students poured out of the building, trying to get to the closest , cheapest eateries before their neighbors could in order to wolf down some sustenance and get almost immediately back to work. Joe and Steckle had ran on ahead, dragging a reluctant Rachel with them, Steckle chuntering away about a new kind of gyro at the Greek place downtown. 

Dave stayed behind, waiting for Nelson to pack up his dissection kit. "Looks like you're bouncing back just fine."

"Logical explanation for everything, Dave."

"For the fact that you look like nothing's happened? I can't think of a logical explanation for that one."

"Just getting back to being myself."

"Yeah, yeah I noticed that. The bitchiness towards Rachel was pretty reminiscent of the old you."

Nelson hand slowed only a tiny bit as he zipped up his case and shouldered his bag. "Walk with me , Dave."

"Where are we going"

"Just out. Come on."

Dave reluctantly followed his friend out of the lab and out the huge, creaking doors of the East Wing building. Despite what he had said before, he knew damn well that this wasn't the old Nelson. Something had gone down all right, whether it had to do with flying coasters or wild imaginations was yet to be seen. But it wasn't over yet. The two walked silently through the bustling Chicago sidestreets, turning their shoulders this way and that as people passed close by. Once you lived around Loyola for as long as they had, stepping out of someone's way became more of an inconvenience than anything else. A slight shift in body position was usually all the was needed to avoid slamming into anyone. It was like a video game, light touches to the controls. The number of passerbys dwindled as they began to get to the student housing section. 401, 402, and then building 403, and Nelson stopped, turning towards the old concrete staircase and sitting down slowly. Dave followed his example.

It was like suddenly shrugging off a huge overcoat. Nelson's shoulders lost all of their tension and he slouched forward putting his elbows on his knees and removing his glasses with almost a slight twitch in his fingers, rubbing them on the edge of his shirt to erase some sort of imaginary smudge. The sculpted emotionless expression on his face cracked along its seams, and Dave could see the worry flushing into it like a blush. He didn't say anything yet. If they were going to get to the bottom of whatever was going on, Nelson had to be the one to initiate the conversation. If Dave tried to question him, he would immediately freeze up. He had seen it before and knew that once Nelson felt like you were interrogating him, he wouldn't say one single god -damned word to you, not even if you were Gabriel with choirs of angels behind you.

A low, snarly laugh that rose quickly in pitch, ending in almost a quiet whimper, came from his side. He glanced over out of the corner of his eye and saw Nelson's shoulder quiver a bit with the effort of the noise. It was as if he didn't know whether to snigger or cry. Dave still remained silent, picking at the cuff of his jacket with a patient finger.

"Dave."

"Yeah?"

"How long have we been friends." It was phrased more as a statement than a question.

"Why?" Dave immediately didn't like this tone of questioning. It lent itself towards fell-sorry-for-me-bullshit.

"Just answer it."

"I don't know...six or seven years I guess."

"And how much do you trust me?"

"Not an inch, and you know it."

"Very funny."

"Look, what are you getting at." But Dave knew exactlywhat he was getting at. He fiddled with his wristwatch, which seemed to have grown uncomfortable tight around his wrist. From the brisk walk, probably. His blood was flowing.

"We're friends for seven years and you decide its all right to nail a girl I've been obsessed with since undergrad."

Dave stood up and brushed off his pants, his lip curling angrily. "Even though nothing happened, and nothing will happen, I'm not gonna sit here and listen to you bitch, Nelson."

"All right...that wasn't what I was going to say."

"Well, you better make what you were going to say very interesting, because I'm out of here in five seconds. I'm not taking your crap any more, not after that entire debaucle last week"

Nelson looked up at him and Dave could see the hesitation in his eyes. A hollow depression appeared in his cheeks for a moment as he clenched his teeth, trying to force the words out. They eventually did, kicking and screaming. "Dave, I'm scared. I'm really, honestly , god-damned scared. I think I'm cracking up."

Nelson openly admitting weakness or fear definitely did catch Dave's attention. The only other time he could remember was in the back of his car when he had finally been able to pry the pickaxe from Nelson's hands. The look of confusion and terror in his eyes at that time, like a lamb being slowly and inevitably being led to slaughter, was reflected here again. His finger were shaking slightly.

"All right. Can I ask you a question?"

"Yeah."

"I haven't seen you smoke all day. Why?"

Nelson looked at him in bewilderment like he had just rattled off a phrase in some ancient dialect. "What?"

"You haven't touched a cigarette today." The blank look didn't change, and Dave leaned over as if to emphasize his words. "Come on man, you smoke like a pair of chimneys."

The concept finally seemed to hit home and Nelson began fumbling around on the pockets of his coat, slowly at first, but then with increasing urgency. It was a pathetic movement, like someone digging through dry sand that kept sliding back into the hole. After what seemed like almost a full minute, he pulled out a three-quarters empty pack and a battered set of matches. Slowly setting them on his knees, he looked at them like he had never seen such things before. One eyebrow twitched, like it was about to rise in suspicion, but then settled back down. In one movement, he tapped a cigarette out of the box and brought it up to his mouth, a motion that Dave knew he could only perform out of physical habit, not mental need, at that moment. He lit the cigarette and breathed in, putting one hand to his forehead, waiting for the nicotine buzz to hit...and began coughing like someone had ripped his larynx out by the cords.

Like he had never had a cigarette in his life.

Dave watched him cough and felt a very strange sensation go through his body, like tiny bugs, ants, something were suddenly running up and down his limbs, then disappearing again. waves of tiny feet all over his skin, running under his clothes, between the hairs on his arms and legs, around his joints and then completely gone again. He felt his watch contract uncomfortably again, and this time it was not his imagination. The metal grew cold.

Something was definitely happening. This was not Nelson Wright anymore. This was someone, or something, else.


	6. Someone There

**No, the story is not dead! Hah...I am in med school myself right now, so finding time to write can be challenging. However, the sudden influx of new reviews is SUPER appreciated!! Wow, where did you all come from? Flatliners obsessers, unite:) I'm still storyboarding the rest of it, but here is another chapter I managed to finish over winter break.**

December passed slowly. As the weeks went by, it became apparent to all of them, and especially Rachel, that some kind of slow-burn decay was happening to Nelson. There weren't any more outbursts, flying objects, or strange occurrences. At least, not in school. He would come to class, sit quietly, take notes, and leave, with barely a nod to the rest of them. He was equally stoic in lab, and any attempt by Steckle at humor was met either with a growl or silence. When he was pushed enough to speak, his usual sarcasm, which had always been softened with an edge of playfulness, degenerated into curt malice.

A rather strange sort of mutual acceptance has materialized between him and Rachel. Once or twice a week, for reasons unknown to her and irrelevant to him, she would stay over at his apartment. Neither one of them knew why. Maybe it was a need for human contact, maybe it was pity on one side and acceptance of said pity on the other. She would come over after her shift at work, and barely a word would be said between them. She would go over casework, he would either study or stare into space. She used to try and start a conversation, but her attempts were met with rolled eyes, smirks, or blunt retorts. Now, they just both sat in silence until the 11:30 el-train roared by the window, and since there was nowhere else to sleep besides a few uncomfortable desk chairs, he grudgingly shared the bed with her. It as one of the oddest relationships Rachel had ever had with another person. He never tried anything, in fact, he seemed to desperately avoid any sort of insinuation that he was even interested. He slept as far on the other side as possible, and sometimes, when she woke up dazedly and realized she had rolled over onto his side, she would feel him gently moving her back over. The conversation she had with Steckle was never mentioned again. Nelson acted as if he couldn't care less, and in a strange way she was grateful. It made things a lot simpler.

But he still jumped when she touched him, and couldn't hold eye contact for longer than a few seconds. However, staying over at his apartment unfortunately gave her a first hand view of whatever kind of corrosion was going on inside that head. And that's what is was, corrosion. Physically, it was even more obvious. Any weight he had on his body flew off, while a constant five-o'clock shadow began to grace his chin from day to day - not the fashionable sort that guys were into these days, but the ill-kept one of a man who could never sleep. He never seemed to bother with his appearance at all, and the only reason his hair wasn't hanging over the edge of his collar was because Rachel had bothered him about it until he let her cut it. It had taken a good half hour of arguing, with Nelson digging his heels in at every opportunity, like a dog refusing a bath. But she won in the end.

He had leaned over the sink with his head down, and for a good ten seconds she couldn't tear her eyes away from the distinct line of vertebrae running down his back.

They stood out like a starving dog's.

She was always a toss-and-turn type of sleeper, and more than once drowsily realized she had rolled over and wasn't just on his "side", she was actually lying against him. Every time, his body just felt..._sharper. _Like leaning against a ladder. All the muscle and fat was just _disappearing_ like someone had thrown him in a concentration camp. She guessed about twenty pounds had come off in around four or five weeks. It was ridiculous. But, if he didn't sleep or eat, and it looked like he did neither, that would explain it.

Occasionally there was something on the floor, or in an odd place in the middle of the room, in the morning - a pen, a paperweight, something small - always just far enough away from the desk to make her wonder, but still close enough that they could have just fallen off. And then there was the talking. It wasn't just when she was there, it happened at school with increasing frequency. He seemed to zone out at random intervals, staring softly into space, and she could swear she heard him talk to himself. Whatever it was, she wasn't even sure if it was words.

It was the Wednesday before the beginning of the school's Christmas holiday when Steckle, his chubby cheeks puffed out and reddened, pulled her aside after Pathology and had asked her if she had heard Nelson "saying anything under his breath" (although, as was Steckle's custom, it took five minutes of harrumphing and posturing before the question actually came out.)

"Saying anything...Has he been saying anything in lab? What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well..." Steckle looked nervously around his shoulder as Nelson passed behind him, giving both of them only a half-nod in acknowledgement. and then continued on. He kept watching, as if he was afraid that in addition to the already displayed forms of oddness, Nelson could have inherited some sort of mind-reading ability

"Randy? Randy. Did you hear him say anything?"

"Rachel." Steckle turned back to her, his caterpillar-esque eyebrows pointed at odd angles, showing his distress. "I really think he's cracking up. Seriously cracking up, like Van Gogh quality cracking up. He's just been, I don't know, muttering to himself for the past couple weeks and its gotten even worse lately, it gives me the frickin willies."

"Talking about Nelson?" The soft voice with a hint of Midwest drawl sounded behind Rachel and she turned to see Dave, his face turned down but eyes focused on hers.

"How did you know."

Dave huffed a laugh to himself and adjusted the ragged backpack on his shoulder. "I dunno. Your expression. And how he was acting in Pathology today."

"I didn 't notice anything."

"Um...that's because you're across the room, Mannus." Steckle interjected, looking ruffled at the interruption.

Dave's voice lost it playfulness and he focused on Rachel with seriousness. "Have you noticed anything? I mean, you're with him a lot more than we are."

Rachel colored slightly, especially considering it was Dave who had made the insinuation. He picked up on the awkwardness of the sentence and stepped in between her and Steckle, lowering his voice. "Easy. You know what I meant by that, right?"

"Yeah. its...its ok."

But Steckle had managed to overhear. "Yeah, I mean if anyone knows, its you, Rachel. I mean...er...what exactly..._are _you guys?"

"What do you mean, what _are _we?" Rachel stepped to the right so she could see Steckle, her eyes flashing defensive gears beginning to grind. "We're nothing."

"Wait, you spend one out of every four nights at his apartment and you're nothing?"

"Yeah, Randy, actually we are nothing. We're friends. He's having a rough time and just needs to company."

"Your company specifically?"

"Steckle, shove it." Dave barked, sensing Rachels' growing discomfort. Personally, he _had _been a little wounded when he has first noticed Rachel coming out of the el-train corner block, a silent Nelson in tow, for eight o'clock classes. But after a while, just watching them interact...it was pretty obvious that nothing was going on. Well, nothing sexual anyways. ..it made him feel a bit better. He and Rachel hadn't done anything, and they weren't going together as per her request, but it gave him a sense of pride that he was still the first in some sort of "line", even though he hated to admit it.

"Seriously guys, he was talking about some really weird stuff in Anesthesia Lab last week, too." Steckle attempted to get them back on track, his attempts at gaining insight into any possible love affair rebuffed.

"Weird stuff like what?" Joe had appeared, drawn like a bee to the honeycomb at the site of the three standing in a tight circle and talking in hushed voices.

"Gossip hog."

"Hey, I just like to keep up with the times."

"Just weird stuff. He kept asking me if I had seen something or heard something...there was nothing going on and I didn't know what to say. It's like he's living in his own little world. He just stares at nothing half the time."

"You know what he told me?"

"No, what did he tell you Joe, we 're all positively dying to know." Dave rolled his eyes.

"He told me...he thinks there is someone else not just in his house still, but in him."

"In him?"

"Yeah, he was saying things about someone being in his head, how he doesn't think he's really there anymore..."

"Maybe someone named Beezlebub who likes to spit green pea soup?"

"Very funny, LaBraish"

"I hate that name."

"Sorry, Labraish."

"Joe..."

"Laaaaa-braaaacchioooo." Joe crooned, sidestepping out of the way of Dave's half-hearted attempt at a shove.

"You ass."

"He hasn't said any of that to me."

"He's not going to say it to you, Rach."

"Oh? And why is that?"

"He doesn't want to scare you off." Steckle interjected.

"Randy - "

"Sorry, sorry. I think we all need to, er, get together and figure out what to do."

"There's not much to figure out. He needs help. He needs to see a doctor, a shrink, somebody." Dave shifted his feet, indicating he needed to get on and was a bit tired of the direction in which the conversation was heading.

"Oh, we're going to send him to a shrink, where he 'll have to go into everything that happened? The entire experiment? You do realize that practicing medicine without a license, stealing that equipment, not to mention practically KILLING each other could get more than a few panties in wads? And WE get kicked out of school? NO thank you." Steckle shook his head vehemently, and Joe nodded in agreement.

"How can you be possibly worried about that? You chose to be involved in the whole thing , you know. And Nelson could possibly be on the verge of, I don't know, a nervous breakdown or something, and you're worried about _school?" _Rachel was incredulous. She knew they were all competitive, and that medical school was most definitely an eat or be eaten environment...but leaving a mentally unstable friend to the wolves just so you could succeed? It made her blood boil. "We need to get him to see someone."

"Before we do anything, we all need to get together and talk about it. This affects all of us, not just you. Do you want to get kicked out of school? Possibly never be able to practice medicine again? Is that what you WANT, Rachel?"

"Look, we don't want to just leave him, but we can't just throw away all of our lives for him." Joe pleaded, stepping ever so slightly closer to Steckle as if to subtly show where his loyalties were.

Dave looked troubled, his eyes flickering back and forth between Rachel and the other two. The fear of never being able to practice medicine again was still fresh in his mind from the last stunt he pulled in the emergency ward, resulting in suspension. But then again, was Joe and Steckle were suggesting was definitely straying into a morally gray area. Dave prided himself on being the most honest of the group, even more so than Rachel...but he had enough drive to know that risking his future for Nelson again was not very high on his list of priorities.

Rachel shook her head, tresses flying. She had had enough. If she listened to them any more, it was going to turn into a yelling match. The best thing to do at this point was to agree for now, and fight her battle later. _I can't believe this_... "Fine. All of you come to my place at eight, I'm going to go check on him. But I swear to God, if there's any talk of cutting him loose, I'll take him in myself. I'm not a goddamned hyena"

She curled her lip angrily at the lot of them and turned, finishing her sentence under her breath " Unlike some."

**TEN OR SO MINUTES LATER **

It was cold

It was always cold, December in Chicago.

But it seemed uncommonly cold inside.

The hardwood floor surprisingly never creaked. Usually, cold weather made them always shift a bit under his feet, but they were silent. In fact, everything was silent. The room was silent. The building was silent. The world was silent. The kind of silence where you couldn't even hear the faint ringing in your ears that you heard when it was quiet all around. Silent like death, like the top of an iceberg in midnight in winter, surrounded by oily black water that was completely still, refusing to lap at the base of the ice.

_Who are you_

At first the silence had been gratifying. Comforting even. You didn't have to think when it was quiet. But it wasn't his thoughts that were worrying him now. It was the other one's thoughts. The ones that slipped in an out of his consciousness when he least expected it, infecting both his waking and sleeping hours like a virus.

_You know who I am_

_No, I don't_

There was some kind of blackness within him now, seeming to take pieces of him away, bit by bit. At first it had been frightening because he didn't know where we has going. But he accepted it. There was nothing else to do but accept it, was there?

_It was over._

_No. It wasn't over. That was just the realization._

_Realization?_

_Realization. Acceptance. The compensation is only just beginning. You took something away, and now something is being take away from you. _

_What 'something' ?_

_I am taking you. Taking what I should have been given. Systematic replacement. Penitence. All the same._

_Replacement_.

It didn't quite process with him. Replacing what with what...But every time he tried to work through it, it was like someone yanked a chain around his neck, as if he were a disobedient dog, correcting him.

_Do not try to understand. It will only prolong the process. Soon it won't matter._

He opened his mouth to try speaking aloud, and the invisible chain snapped around his neck again.

_I said, do not try to understand_

He was sitting on the floor, by the side of the heavy desk centered in the room. His back was tense and spine pushed uncomfortably up against the unyielding wood, as if shrinking away from something. Why he was on the floor, he didn't know. He vaguely remembered coming out of class, passing Rachel and Steckle. Steckle had given him a strange, almost fearful look, but rather that take offense he had continued on. Come home, put down his bag, walking across the room...and then stopping and slowly sitting down, but that was it.

There was an echo somewhere. An echo of a voice. It sounded like it was almost underwater, gurgled, quiet, like a drowning man's last attempt at calling for help. He recognized his name. But the identity couldn't be made out.

"Nelson?"

It was a little louder this time. It was a female voice.

"Rachel?" He wasn't sure if the croaking half-name he uttered was in his head or in reality. Like water going down a drain, the glassy mist in front of his eyes swept away and he began to feel solid objects around him. The hardwood floor , the heavy desk against his back. His pupils contracted and focus came back, grainy at first but sharper and he managed to slowly move his head from side to side. It _was _Rachel.

"Are you...okay?" Her voice held the same, slightly fearful tone that Steckle's eyes had emanated when he passed them earlier. If he had been more cogent, his first reaction would have been anger at being treated like some sort of caged animal, some sort of freak-show. But right now, just being able to see the face of another, real, tangible person in the room was comforting, no matter how they were looking at him. The creeping voice in his head was gone. He shook his head again, slowly, but it didn't come back.

"I'm not sure."

Rachel stared into his eyes, which were still focused out into space. His pupils were tight, like tiny black holes punched in the crystalline blue of the iris. Like he had been staring into some sort of very bright light. He was sweating very lightly, even in the chill of the apartment, and his muscles were lax. She sat down next to him cross-legged, watching him as he seemed to slowly pull himself back into reality. Her mind was still on the conversation she had just had with the others. She had spent the whole walk down to the apartment fuming, barely reining in the desire to kick every chain-link fence she passed, crush every leaf or stick on the sidewalk, shoot nasty glances at everyone who passed her field of vision...but seeing Nelson sitting here, looking for all the world helpless, only convinced her more that she was right. Steckle was completely out of line. He had no idea how bad this was getting. This wasn't something to be shrugged off because they were afraid of getting in trouble. She didn't know was Steckle and Joe were planning, but if it came down to a face-off, she would damn well make sure to get Dave on her side. He was the most sensible of all of them after all, right?

(_well...he was the one who said to go ahead with the whole thing because he could bring Nelson back...he would get into much more trouble than Joe or Steckle, or even you...what makes you think he'd be on your side? What makes you think he'd risk his career again, so soon after getting a big ole slap on the wrist from the school board last semester?)_

_I don't know. _She answered the doubts in her head with as much courage as she could muster, but a strange, unsure feeling was already curling in her stomach.

A feeling that was only worsened when Nelson finally lifted his head enough to look back at her, and she realized that something was missing from them. Some part of himself...it wasn't describable. For the first time in her life, she actually missed the sly Nelson wink, or the mock puppy eyes when he was convincing her to do something, or even the exceptionally annoying way he would roll them skyward in feigned disgust when someone said something he considered stupid. Anything would be better than what was being reflected in them now -which was almost nothing.

"Nelson?" She put a hand up to his face. It felt as cold as the room itself. He didn't draw away from her hand, as he usually did. He didn't even flinch.

"What?"

"Where are you?" It sounded like the silliest question in the world in her ears. But right now, any sort of honest, cogent answer from his would do.

"I'm right here"

_except that one..._

His lips twitched in an attempt at the old lopsided smile, like reflex that hadn't quite been wrung out of him yet...but the eyes remained the same.

"No. You're not."

They sat in the cold, yawning space of the dead apartment, looking at each other, not moving.

"You're not."


	7. The First Day of the Rest of Our Lives

**This is just a wee little flashback chapter for your amusement…..since the last few were rather serious. The next few weeks are going to be hellishly busy so I have no idea if I will get anything done….but we will see. I'll be around ;) It will come about eventually, slowly but surely.**

**A FEW YEARS AGO…..**

"Goodbye, college girls!" Joe blew a hugely exaggerated, sloppy kiss towards the main campus from the steps of the medical building "Parting is such sweet sorrow. First day of medical school begins."

Nelson snorted in amusement, shoving his hands in his pockets "Oh, but Joe, think of all the lovely med school ladies. I'm sure they're all going here specifically to drool over your manly physique in Anatomy lab."

"What lovely med school ladies? They're all here for careers and that...kind of thing, that stuff."

"Yes, those damnable women. They should be back popping out bundles of joy and scrubbing toilets and cooking pot roast where they belong."

"Not, funny, Wright. Augh...this is going to severely hamper my leisure time."

'Still going for quantity of ass over quality of ass, are we? What about Anne?"

Joe turned back to him as they continued up the steps. "Aw, come on, don't play that card. Of course I love her, I love her to death."

"Uh-huh."

"I just...you know how it is. We both have school ahead of us, we're going to be apart...just getting out some last kicks before settling down."

"I'll make sure to suggest a pre-nup."

"Harsh, man."

Nelson shoved the right side of the large swinging door open with his shoulder, hands still in his pockets. The waft of inside air hit him and he smiled to himself. The slight smell of formaldehyde, the constant, soft pitter-pattering murmur of people going over casework in the halls...thank goodness. No more of this useless undergraduate bullshit, being surrounding by people with the IQ of a beef cow.

They were there, they made it. Medical school. Pinnacle of education.

"What about that redhead of yours? Guess she's out of here now too, huh?"

"Rachel? Not mine"

"Rachel, yeah. She's a nice piece."

"Watch it."

"Thought you said she wasn't yours." Joe gave his friend a sideways glance and a wink. But Nelson didn't take the bait, keeping his voice calm and indifferent.

"She's not. We had classes together. But I'd appreciate it if you refrained from lapsing into dick-speak for just a few occasional minutes when you're with me."

He was planning to leave it at that, but the next sentence slipped out...as if by saying it he could make it a bit more real. "Last time I talked to her, she mentioned med school."

"Are you serious?" Joe waggled his eyebrows as they continued down the hall, heading for the 8:00 am Anatomy Lab. "Here? At Loyola?"

"Didn't say where."

Joe stopped a pulled a grin. "Wait, wait…this is Nelson, actually speaking _at length _to a member of the female sex?"

"Amazing, I know." Nelson rolled his eyes, edging his voice a tad in an attempt to change the subject.

"So, conversing, huh?"

"Nah. Not much. Way I figure it, the more you talk to them, the more they are probably going to convince you that they're idiots. I prefer the state of blessed ignorance."

"You mean worshipping from afar?"

Nelson made an ugly face, as if to show exactly how much stock he put in the phrase. "It means you never have your hopes dashed by finding our they're nothing but a hunk of plastic and makeup with heels underneath that attractive exterior."

"Cold, man."

"But I'm never disappointed."

"But you never get laid."

"Touche. But then again, I prefer my current state than yours. At least I don't have to go to bed worrying about what creepy crawlies I may find in my bed, left by a recent encounter with the type you tend to go for."

"Wright?"

"Yes?"

"You _need_ to get laid."

"Joe?"

"Yeah?"

"You _need_ to stop being an ass."

"No seriously. You're just going to explode one day from all this tension. Or turn gay. Or something."

"I don't need to have sex."

"And why is that?"

"Because.." he paused for dramatic effect and smirked "Med school is going to fuck me every day."

"Dude, that's the most disappointing joke I have heard out of you in a while."

"Only because its true."

They arrived at the lab and headed in. The scent of formaldehyde was even stronger. Sheet-covered bodies were arranged in a semicircle, two white-coated student standing nervously next to each one. It look like some kind of bizarre, cultish initiation ritual. Nelson lifted his head and saw Steckle to his left, and nodded goodbye to Joe, who immediately smiled as he saw his new lab partner...a petite, attractive brunette.

"_Doctor_ Steckle"

"_Doctor _Wright. Isn't it a tad early for being called a doctor?"

"Not for me."

The class was called to attention and dissection kits were handed out. Nelson surveyed his classmates, his lip curling a bit in contempt. _We'll see how long most of them last. _Medical school was a classic Darwinian model - only the strong survive. Half of the class already looked shaky, nervous, overwhelmed. He was sure half of them got in barely by the seat of their pants. They were probably science majors who traipsed through college with a high GPA, and decided med school would be the "cool thing to do". And now, they looked terrified. He, on the other hand, was completely composed. He was meant to be here. He couldn't have been anywhere else. It was just supposed to be that way.

"Nelson? Hey Nelson, if you keep up that expression you're going to scare everyone off."

"My sparkling personality and engaging banter makes up for it."

"Ha-ha. Do you have an extra scalpel blade? They only gave me four."

Nelson expertly fitted a blade onto his scalpel and passed an extra, unopened one to Steckle. "Here. They left a second hemostat out of mine too."

"So much for being impressed with the administration the first day."

Professors and lab assistants were circulating, passing out syllabi and assignments. Nelson sniggered a tad to himself, watching the expression of his classmates go from nervous to utterly despairing as the casework papers, at least 200 sheets each, were handed out in huge piles. It was 8:09 when the door to the lab crashed open, and someone came in, amidst a flurry of papers, lab coat, and red hair. Steckle looked up first, Nelson languidly following. Surely, some other little scared student, late on the first day.

"Hey, isn't that Mannus from Genetics last semester?"

"Holy shit..." At the same time, Nelsons jaw dropped, his muscles tensed, and his hands lost whatever grip they had on the neatly laid out dissection kit in his hands. The crash of metal hitting floor and cry of pain didn't even register with him. It didn't even register after he and Steckle were hustled out of lab amidst curses and warnings from the lab staff. Finally, when they were both in the lab manager's office, in trouble on the very first class on the very first day of four years of medical school...did he realize. This was going to either be an agonizingly terrible, or possibly fantastic, four years


	8. Options

**Hey all. Ok, know its short….but it's important! ;) More is in the making.**

After a full hour of discussion, countless cups of tea and coffee, and a nearly constant trading session of accusations and snide remarks, they had all gotten absolutely, positively nowhere.

Joe had given up trying to contribute something useful to the debate after about twenty minutes, seeing as he was either overruled or interrupted by everyone else. Steckle was muttering under his breath, arms crossed across his chest, looking like and extremely upset baby walrus. Dave simply looked tired and confused.

And Rachel...Rachel was staring like a black thundercloud from the couch at all of them.

They sat in silence for a good five minutes until Steckle finally spoke, the frustration in his voice evident. "So basically, we've agreed to do nothing."

"He's having a follow-up MRI tomorrow, we can at least wait until then, rule out anything physical."

"Look, there isn't going to be anything on this MRI that wasn't on the last one. They're not going to point to something and go 'Oh! That little blip there, that does telekineses, look at that!' "

"We still have not definitive proof that anything like that is happening." The scientist in Rachel answered automatically, but knew she had led herself into a trap

"Oh, so you're taking back what you said before? About stuff flying around in your apartment?"

"No...I'm not. I don't know what that was. But you don't either, Randy, none of us do. Something's just gone wrong in his head, very badly wrong. And it's our duty as his friends to see him through it, or get him out of it, or whatever needs to be done." Rachel uncrossed her legs and brought her right boot down to the floor with loud _clack_ that punctuated her words with a kind of finality.

"What about the whole psychotic break theory?" The sound of something mildly academic coming out of Joe's mouth made them all turn in surprise.

"What do you mean psychotic break theory?" Dave raised an eyebrow and leaned forward, cracking his back and making a slight face in the process.

"The word "psychotic" isn't exactly making me feel more comfortable about the whole thing, Joe."

"You know, when people hit that point, have a nervous breakdown, whatever...sometimes they come out of it completely normal. Like it was some sort of disease that just had to run its course, get really bad, hit its maximum, and then poof, it runs out of steam."

"And most of them end up in loony bins talking to flowers and fingerpainting in their own urine."

"Yeah, but not all. I mean...it looks like he's going to hit a break either way."

"That's a really optimistic way to look at it Joe." Rachel replied caustically.

"He is, just look at him! When we go back into clinical rotations next week it's going to be even worse. Can you seriously see him interacting with patients right now? He's about the crack." Joe turned his face to Rachel, apparently pleading "Come on, Rach, even you know it. We know you two are pretty...um...close. I'm not trying to be the bad guy -"

"No, you're just saying that we should watch while Nelson has a quote, psychotic break - "

"I'm not saying just watch, maybe...maybe kind of monitor."

"How is monitoring different than watching? Please don't tell me you've gotten into semantics, you can barely spell your own name sometimes."

"That was once. And I was drunk."

"And it was funny" Steckle snorted.

"Monitoring." Dave began, speaking slowly, as if formulating the sentences in slow motion. "Monitoring means you have involvement. You're orchestrating in some way." His eyes narrowed, and then widened as he realized the beginnings of what Joe was suggested. "Not just watching."

There was a long pause as the meaning of the words sunk in to all of them.

"Are you suggesting we _push_ him towards this? Are you crazy?" Rachel suddenly exploded, unable to hold the words back any more.

"But if we do, then at least we'll be able to have control over it. We could push him to a break, make sure he doesn't get hurt...well, hurt physically you know, in the process...and it could all be over, he could be back to normal."

"Or he would be completely insane for the rest of his life, Joe, you HAVE to be joking!"

"How on earth do you push someone to a psychotic break?" Steckle's voice held more curiosity than abhorrence.

"I've read some stuff."

"Oh, you can read now too?"

"God, Rachel, what is with you? You've ascended to a new level of super-bitch this past month, Jesus!"

Rachel's jaw dropped and she stared at Joe, who looked rather ashamed at what had just come out of his mouth. Dave and Steckle both cringed, fully expecting an explosion of profanity from Rachel.

Joe back-peddled ,stuttering. trying to dig himself out of the ditch he had just made. "Well...um, I know you're kind of uptight and...well... you've just been really even more uptight. That's, that's all I meant."

"What Joe is trying to say, and failing impressively at saying, is that we're all a little concerned about you too." Dave interrupted calmly.

"You three don't exactly seem like the caring types at the moment" Rachel tried to sound cold, but her voice wavered.

"Why are you so defensive about him? I thought, well, we all though, you hated him."

"You want to know why I have a personal interest in this, is that it?

"Yeah."

"Pretty much."

"We've just never seen you so -"

"If you say that b-word again, Joe, I'll - "

"I wasn't gonna say it!"

"Calm down, both of you. Are you going to tell us, or not?"

Rachel leaned back into the cough and crossed her arms loosely, looking down. The anger drained from her face, slowly, like makeup melting off. It was replaced by such a profound look of sadness that Dave was ashamed they had even asked. But before the awkwardness could become worse, she spoke.

"Because I was the last person he wanted to talk to before he died."

"_David!"_

_"No...It's Nelson."_

_"Nelson, where are you? Dave is out trying to find you."_

"...He wanted to apologize to me. For everything. It's scary, to be that important to someone. If you knew you were going to die, who would you want to talk to?"

_"Rachel, I...I wanted to say I was sorry. Please tell David I'm sorry for ever getting ever any of you involved in this."_

_"No, you don't understand, none of that matters now - "_

"...Your parents, or your wife, or your husband, someone like that. You would want to talk to the most important person in your life, if you knew you were going to die within the next hour. But he wanted to talk to _me_. He trusted _me_ with that. His voice was just so...miserable. .." 

_"Rachel, everything matters. Everything we do matters. That's why I'm going under again."_

_"No! No Nelson, please wait -"_

_"Good bye Rachel."_

_"Nelson, tell me where you are!"_

"...I couldn't help him that time."

_"I really am sorry."_

"...So yeah, I do feel like I have a responsibility to him, because he considers me that important. God knows why, but he does."


	9. Something New

Back at his apartment and after a long, perhpas overly hot shower, Nelson was feeling more like his old self

Back at his apartment and after a long, perhpas overly hot shower, Nelson was feeling more like his old self. A little more swagger, a little more composure , a little more like the normal bastardly gunner . He sat at the antique desk, twirling a pencil around in his finger impatiently and staring at the papers before him.

Dermatology rotation starting tomorrow. _What could possibly be more boring _he wondered. A bunch of pimply-faced high-schoolers, some hyped-up housewives with shingles, a series of mysterious rashes in unsightly places...please.

The subject matter made it easy to get distracted. He carefully set the pencil down and crossed his arms, staring at it intently.

It didn't budge.

"Move."

Nothing

_Move_

Still nothing.

Slitting his eyes, he tried to think of something upsetting. Something to make him angry. Rachel, something about Rachel should do the trick...Rachel and...Dave! Rachel and Dave. He though furiously, picturing every word coming out of Dave's mouth, all laced with the infuriatingly boyish charm that he himself could never muster, Rachel giggling, holding hands, staying over, sleeping over...

_MOVE_

Still nothing, nothing at all.

Bah. He blew a shock of blond hair off his forehead and out of his eyes with a snort of disgust.

It was 1:45, fifteen minutes until the MRI appointment, Why they felt the need to scan him again, when he was perfectly clean after the first time, he had no idea. A few hours of his life wasted getting crammed into a small space and having people analyze his brain. After one last half-hearted attempt at staring at the pencil, he slid back out of the chair, hooked his keys off the table and twirled them into his pocket with a single finger, and headed for the door.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Contrary to most, Nelson had no problem with hospital waiting rooms. They were cold, clean, relaxing. The silence wasn't nerve-wracking, it was calming. The scan had been boring as hell, but those things always were. It was like being inside some sort of tiny, tubular spacecraft.

The doctor was certainly taking his time, however. The calm atmosphere of the room was beginning to take on his sense of growing impatience.

Finally, there was a knock on the door and Nelson replied with a quick "Sure." The doctor, a man who looked much older than his thirty or so years, stepped in, his face averted. Immediately Nelson sensed something odd in the man's demeanor. It wasn't boredom, which he was accustomed to seeing with specialists, especially neurologists. It was a hesitancy. Hesitancy? What could he possible be hesitant about. Angry that there was nothing "interesting" or "wrong" about the scan? Nelson snorted to himself. He was, in truth, the same way...things only got interesting if there was something wrong.

The doctor walked across the room and deftly popped the scan images onto the lightbox. Nelson glanced at them, uninterested. He didn't have to look at them. They were fine. He knew that coming in, and he'd know it coming out.

"Mr. Wright, we

_...are happy to report that your scans came back completely normal. I'm sorry it took so long, we were just a little backed up today..._

found some abnormal results on your scan. I'd like to take a look at these with you."

_Wait._

Nelson stared at the doctor's stolid face uncomprehendingly. "Abnormal?" He stood up, ignoring the doctor, and stared closely at the scans. Sure enough...a small patch of very light gray, almost white, not even visible unless you looked quite closely...where there shouldn't be one.

"What...the fuck...is _that._" He hadn't meant to curse, especially not in a hospital, but it slipped out.

"There are a few things it could be. But I have to be honest with you. Considering the location and margins, it might be something that would require treatment."

"Treatment?" He knew this speech. His heart was speeding up faster than his brain was buzzing. This was the delicately-put speech a doctor had to give when something was seriously awry. "Stop beating around the goddamned bush. They taught us how to dance around points too, just get to it."

The doctor seemed a bit taken aback and cleared his throat a few times. He looked as if he was almost ready to continue in the same vein of talking, but at the last minute there was a change in the timbre of his voice that let Nelson know the act had been dropped.

"It's most likely an astrocytoma."

Nelson balked. And stared. at the scans. Then slowly turned to the doctor.

"Astrocytoma."

"Yes. That's what the pattern fits. We'd like to run an MRI and -"

"After a previous recent scan showed nothing, now you see neoplasia."

"It would appear so."

"That's...that's bullshit."

"It could have been missed the first time around - "

"No, no. You don't miss fucking brain cancer." The language was coming fast and furious as Nelson felt his gorge rising in a strange combination of nausea and anger

"Have you been having any neurological symptoms? Any seizures?"

"No, no seizures." _Maybe...well, not actual seizures..._

"Blackouts? Difficulty in thought process? Headaches?"

That hit a nerve and Nelson balked, spitting out a lie that even he knew to be a stupid one. "No. None of your business."

"As your doctor, it is my business."

"You're full of it." He was getting more and more agitated, staring at that little light spot on the scan. One fuzzy white spot in the wrong place. "No...no, no, those things take time to develop...it's, it's usually chronic, increases pressure over time, I know this...I'm...I...know this...I..." He turned his head jerkily from side to side, starting to say something stopping, starting., and suddenly blurting in a voice borne of desperation "I'm a medical student!!"

It sounded incredible small and pathetic.

"Mr. Wright, I'd like to follow up with an MRI scan and some survey radiographs to check for any sort of metasasis..."

But the words weren't even entering his ears now.

There was something growing in his brain. Something that could possible kill him. This wasn't possible. This wasn't real. It couldn't be. _It doesn't explain why you're making shit fly around, you know. _

It seemed that the supernatural was catching up to the physiological. What he didn't know was which was the ends and which was the means. With the doctors voice droning unintelligible in his ear, Nelson couldn't move his eyes from the scans. Neither he nor the doctor noticed the stethoscope on the table jittering slightly, or the miniscule drop in temperature of the room.


	10. A Push in the Right Direction

**And you thought this story was dead. With a break from clinics, I'm back into it.**

Rachel was already home and reading on the couch when the familiar triple-rap on the door came. She tabbed to book, got up and opened the door only to see Nelson with his eyes fixed on the ground.

"Hey." She stepped aside the let him in, but he didn't budge. "How….did the scan go?"

"I don't think I should be coming over here anymore."

His eyes didn't move from the ground. Rachel blinked in surprise, watching him stand there, unmoving, trenchcoat flapping in the breeze over his thin shoulders. For a minute it was two statues standing opposite, until she shook herself out of speechlessness.

"Nelson?"

"I thought I'd just tell you in case you wondered where I was."

"Nelson, what happened?"

But he had already turned and was walking back down the steps.

"Hey!" Rachel reached in and snatched her coat from the hook by the door and followed his quickly retreating figure. "Hey! You can't just do this without telling me what's wrong."

They walked in unison down the stairs and out onto the street, with Nelson never moving his eyes from where he placed his feet except to pull out a cigarette out of a pack with his teeth and commence to light it.

"Is this something to do with the scan? Nelson, you have to tell me."

"No, I most certainly don't." He managed, successfully lighting the cigarette and shoving the lighter down into the pocket of his coat. She would have expected some snarl in such a phrase, but his voice remained flat.

"Nelson, please." She hurried to keep up with him. He walked as if he knew exactly where he was going, and was late to boot. "Nelson, this isn't fair!"

"what isn't fair, exactly?" He stopped, so quickly that she almost ran into him. Their eyes locked and Rachel immediately saw what was wrong. There was a reason he had his eyes fixed on the ground.

_Something was very, very different about them. It reminded her of the time she found him slumped against the desk in a state of dreamlike semi-coma. The color was right, the shape was right, the pupils were right. But not all of it was Nelson. There was something else in there, something else that gave that blue iris just a tinge of glint that was unlike anything she recognized as being normal self._

_It was like watching one person entrenched in the body of another._

"what…just please, tell me what happened?" Her voice quavered a bit. In all honesty, she wasn't sure who she was speaking to.

"Nothing happened. I just came to a decision that it would be better if we just ignored each other, since we became so good at it over the years."

A tiny bit of fear began to hatch in Rachel's stomach. Something had definitely happened, and no matter how much he denied it, she knew it. He had never been good at hiding things. _Well, except one thing_.

"They found something, didn't they?"

Nelson let out a small, angry noise around the filter of the cigarette and continued walking. She followed, unable to be annoyed anymore. This wasn't just nasty behavior, this was the slow-burn-Nelson-panic. Like a dog that separates itself from the pack because it knows it's going to….die? Oh, God.

Rachel hopskipped ahead and stood directly in front of him, forcing him to stop. "Tell me. Now."

He didn't answer and his eyes returned to the ground.

"Please, Nelson."

They stood in silence for a few seconds, as Nelson blinked and took short breaths, as if he was trying to start a sentence but wasn't sure which words to use.

"It's….they found something they didn't expect to see, but that isn't why I'm doing this."

"And?"

"A mass."

"As in tumor?" Rachel's head immediately went into medical mode, scanning all of the neurological tumors she could think of. None of them good.

Seeing as to how he had let the proverbial cat out of the bag, Nelson resigned and the clipped tone disappeared. "Maybe. They don't know. But it doesn't matter, because it's happening to me and not you."

Rachel was at a total loss. _What do you say to someone who was just told they have brain cancer? Jesus. I'm sorry? Are you kidding? That doesn't even begin to cut it. _

But she didn't have time to think up an appropriate response, because Nelson kept walking. This time, she didn't follow.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The door to his apartment swung open and he was greeted with the familiar, cold smell of paint and emptiness. He shrugged off his coat, not bothering to hang it up, and headed straight for the bed, flopping down on his back in a demonstration of complete resignation.

This can't be happening.

But it is.

And the worst part is, it doesn't explain everything.

Nelson's entire thought process was, and had always been, cause and effect. A leads to B leads to C. But there was no linear relationship to all of this. Sure, they were related, but there was no medical causality. He hadn't told anyone else about the silent mental spats he had been having with whatever was in his head. It was reminiscent of paranoia, schizophrenia, or another one of the multiple disorders that eventually sent people off to the bughouse. The voice was disjointed, and it didn't appear to be speaking English. Yet, he could understand it. And even though he had removed anything that had even a small metal component from the apartment, he knew that the strange movement occurrences weren't gone either. It happened occasionally at Rachels's place, and he was becoming terrified that every clang of something falling or being thrown on the street was due to him.

Nelson closed his eyes and began murmuring under his breath. What he needed to do now was get a grip and sort this out. Letter by letter, point by point.

Differential diagnoses, grouping symptoms, this was what he was trained to do.

One: Peracute brain mass

Two: The voice

Three: Paranoia

Four: Things flying around and moving when I get upset

Five: Blacking out

Everything could be explained by physical illness except number four. And the fact that number four happened made everything else in the diagnosis back up for grabs. Everything has to fit for a diagnosis to work. Or at least, it has to fit somewhat. This didn't fit at all.

_Are we wandering into the realm of the supernatural here? Why not? Didn't the experiment dive into the land of a supernatural? There was no logical explanation for any of that, was there ? No, I imagined all of it. There was no Billy Mahoney, I was imagining all of it. Were they imagining all of it? Even if there wasn't a physical presence, can't a supernatural force invade the mind? Make you think things? Speak to you?_

"Balls." Nelson whimpered, throwing his hands up to his face and pressing them against his forehead. A year ago he would have considered himself to be thinking nonsense and gone to take a cold shower. But in his current state of desperation, it made sense. It was then that his phone rang. He nearly jumped out of his skin at the high, tinny, electronic jangle. For a second, he feared the voice in his head might actually be finding other ways to speak now. Stop it. That's ridiculous. He squirmed off the bed and cautiously approached the phone, then lifted it out of it's receiver which an almost inaudible click. "Hello?"

There was nothing on the other line.

No dial tone, no static.

Nothing.

He fought the twist of fear in his stomach and cleared his throat. "Hello?"

Nothing.

And then, suddenly, a sound that could only be described as screeching metal combined with electronic feedback blasted into his ears with the intensity of a freight train. It was so loud it felt like something popped inside his brain, something broke. "Damn it!" he shrieked, tossing the phone across the room.

It skittered along like an insect until it came to rest against the opposite wall.

Silent. Nelson stared at the phone, unable to control the shaking in his legs. What in all the levels of hell was that? His mind began running in a million different directions, telling him he was crazy, telling him he was getting a sign, telling him it wasn't real, telling him anything but something he believed. He took several steps backwards, keeping his eyes on the phone, until he felt the bed against his knees. He sat, and only then did he realize the extent to which his muscles had tensed.

He laid back, legs dangling over the edge of the bed, and stared at the ceiling with a dull, catatonic look in his eyes.

_Nelson?_

It came again. But this time, he was too tired to ignore it. His mouth moved automatically.

"Yes."

And the conversation began.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"I still can't believe you two are doing this." Dave watched Steckle hang up the phone and turn off his computer speakers, which had been turned to almost full volume. Joe looked away.

"I don't like it either, but it's either have all of us handed over, or we can try and fix this." But even Steckle sounded unsure of himself. "If we can just increase his stress level to a certain point, he can reach a break and that'll be the end result….we're just hurrying along whatever outcome would happen anyway."

"And you know that for sure? You know for sure that doing this is just hastening an outcome, not changing it? I knew you were full of it, Randy, but I didn't think this much. This is dangerous, I'm not kidding."

"Of course I'm not sure of it," Steckle hissed aware he was losing ground, "but a lot of literature points to it. I'm not doing this just because-"

"Yes, you are."

"No, I'm not!"

"Dave, come on –"

"Shut up, Joe! As if you have EVER done anything useful for ANYONE in your entire man-whoring life!"

"Screw you!"

"Dave, listen to me!" Steckle's voice had gone up a few pitches. "Dave, I'm scared, all right?"

Dave scoffed "I'm sure you are."

"Yes, I am. I'm seeing my friend go down the ultimate Slip'n'Slide of mental derangement, and I'm trying to do something the only way I know how, without getting him kicked out of medical school at the same time, which _definitely would_ put him over the edge! Look, we have three options. Option one, we blow this all out into the open, force him to get help - "

"Get him AND us kicked out of med school –" Joe grumbled

"Right, get him and us kicked out….right before we finally get our degrees…come on Dave, you know Nelson as well as I do, and you know that getting kicked out would drive him over the brink and past it. Medicine is his LIFE. It's everything he's ever wanted to do. It's mental suicide, and possibly physical to follow."

"And your other options??"

" We can sit tight and watch him slowly degenerate, because there is no way he's going to get help on his own, you know that."

"Or?"

"Or we can push him. Give him a chance to just break out of it. It's the only way Dave, and I don't like it any more that you do."

"I bet it'll make a great chapter in your book." Dave turned away and headed for the door, his voice grating.

And for the first time in his life, Randy Steckle completely lost it. He hurled the dictaphone at Dave, hitting him square in the back of the head and rushed him, pummeling the taller man across the face with a large fist. Joe immediately dove into the fray and separated the two before Dave could even register that Steckle had hit him.

"Guys, cut it out! Now!"

"Don't put this on me Dave! Don't pretend you're the only one who gives a shit about Nelson, because you're not! I've known him just as long as you have, and he's just as much my friend despite the huge stick shoved up his ass, and so help me God I'm trying to do the right thing! Don't act so fricking high and mighty when you were just as involved in this entire ordeal as me! In fact, you were more so - I was the only one trying to tell you idiots not to do it! So get off your high horse and SHUT the HELL UP!"

There was a long silence as Dave looked back at him, flabbergasted. Steckle composed himself and disengaged Joe's arm from his shoulder, turning away and curling his lip in anger. "If you're not going to help, then get out of here Dave. Go back to school, or Rachel, or whatever you want."

"Randy, come on, I'm sorry."

"Then help me try to fix him."

Dave closed his eyes tightly and opened them again. This was insane. And the fact that Steckle was making sense was even more insane. But what else could they do. He took several deep breaths and looked from Joe, to Steckle, to the phone, and back again. "You swear to me that you're doing this with good intentions?"

"Dave, if we knew of anything better to do, we'd do it. If this all gets found out, everyone's career is ruined, because we'll have to explain everything." Joe murmured.

"And that would mean the end of our success, but it'd end up likely being the end of Nelson's life. This is the only thing we can do besides watching him slowly spiral down. He has a chance this way." Steckle finished, still a bit on edge as if he expected Dave to come back in swinging.

Dave nodded, ever so slightly.

"All right."


End file.
